It has become increasingly apparent that as time goes on, manufacturing has shifted to remote locations where labor costs are less than those in this country. This is particularly true as it pertains to the manufacture of non-technical or relatively low end products which rely upon various unskilled but labor intensive operations. However, as manufacturing has shifted to off shore locations, shipping costs have become an increasingly more significant factor in establishing product pricing.
Typically, manufactured goods produced in Asia are imported into the United States on containerized vessels. These goods are not only manufactured but packaged at Asian factories and multiple units placed within cardboard containers or otherwise bundled in groups for placement within cargo containers which are, in turn, stacked atop appropriately configured vessels. The shipping cost per item is dictated by the number of such items which can be placed within such shipping containers as the cost per transoceanic passage substantially remains fixed.
Certain items, such as televisions, stereos, computers and semiconductor chips are configured with hard outer casings and there is little that a shipper can do to reduce shipping costs. In these instances, one would only try to maximize stacking efficiencies in order to take full advantage of shipping container volumes. However, the situation is considerably different for products such as pillows, blankets, bedding and plush novelty items which possess large volumes of air or otherwise compressible space. In those instances, shipping costs could be significantly reduced if the volumes of such products were reduced in order to enable a shipper to incorporate more unit items per container.
Vacuum packing has been available to a multitude of users varying from home consumers who wish to preserve food products to those wishing to store soft goods for long periods of time. In each instance, a plastic membrane is placed about an object and vacuum drawn in order to reduce internal volume by collapsing the plastic membrane onto its contents.
Although vacuum sealing in the creation of packaging for manufactured goods may have been contemplated by others, in each instance, these plastic enclosures have not been fabricated to act as their own shipping containers. Invariably, plastic enclosures, be they vacuum sealed or otherwise, are housed in outer protective enclosures, such as printed cardboard boxes in order to protect the inner plastic wrap from anticipated abuse incurred during shipping. This anticipated shipping damage is particularly of concern when dealing with vacuum sealed enclosures for a single puncture or abuse-induced breakage can cause a loss of internal vacuum resulting in potentially catastrophic consequences. A loss of internal vacuum could compromise the integrity of perishable goods while bulk items whose volumes have been reduced as a result of the application of suitable vacuum pressures could expand during shipping resulting in damage to the containerized vessel and adjacent packaged goods.
In addition to the above concerns, it is quite apparent that “double packaging” in terms of providing a vacuum creating shroud about an object which is then encased in an outer abuse-resistant shipping package adds yet a further cost which must be absorbed by the ultimate consumer.
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide vacuum packaging in order to reduce shipping volume and thus cost of a wide range of manufactured goods.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide vacuum packaging which can act both as a vacuum induced volume reducing shroud but also as a shipping container without the need for any external outer protective expedience.
These and other objects will be more readily appreciated when considering the following disclosure and appended claims.